Jim Koch is a sixth-generation brewmaster who quit a six-figure consulting job to launch a business.
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00:00I told my dad I was going to leave this pretty good job to start a small brewery.
00:05He looked at me and he said, Jim, you've done some stupid things in your life.
00:10This is about the stupidest.
00:13I grew up in Southern Ohio and my mother was an elementary school teacher and my father
00:19was a brewmaster.
00:21I'm actually the sixth oldest son in a row to be a brewer.
00:26I went to Harvard.
00:27After college, I entered the JD-MBA program.
00:31I did the first two years of that program and I realized I'm not sure I want to do this.
00:38So I dropped out and I spent three and a half years running wilderness courses.
00:44And after three and a half years, I decided, all right, I'm ready to go back.
00:47Completed the course and went from there to Boston Consulting Group.
00:52After seven years at Boston Consulting Group, I realized that I probably didn't want to
00:58do that for the rest of my life.
01:00What I really want to do is make beer.
01:02And so I told my dad I was going to leave this pretty good job to start a small brewery.
01:08Honestly, starting Samuel Adams was easier than it seems.
01:13I didn't have much money.
01:14I raised $140,000 from friends and family.
01:19I didn't need a whole bunch of people and I had $100,000 of my own money.
01:23We didn't have bootstraps.
01:25It might have been a shoestrings because when I started, there were only two people.
01:30It became very clear to me that there were only two things that we needed to do extraordinarily well.
01:36One was we need to make a great beer.
01:38That was proved when we got chosen as the best beer in America.
01:43That was very cool.
01:45This little company, two people, was making the best beer in America in Boston.
01:51I never thought Samuel Adams would be this successful.
01:56It's 40 years later and we're still continuing to innovate, bring out new products, and grow.